1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to table and tree viewers, and specifically to navigation and display of items in table and tree viewers.
2. Description of Related Art
Computers are accessed by users through user interfaces. User interfaces typically comprise a visual display that shows data, and users manipulate the display with controls such as mouse and keyboard. In some cases, such as long lists of data, not all the relevant data can be displayed at one time to a user. There are many paging mechanisms that are used to reduce the number of items displayed at any given time, allowing representation of a large amount of data without actually displaying the data itself. Existing paging mechanisms and user interfaces do not allow multi-level partitioning, and are also external to the data itself. A typical example is a scroll bar, allowing a user to scroll down a list, displaying different parts of the list as the scroll bar is moved. However, these existing paging mechanisms do not provide quick access to all parts of a large list, and usually function by allowing the user to browse an entire list, tree, or table piece by piece.
Therefore, the art would be improved by introducing a scalable tree viewer that allows display of different parts of a data model (such as a tree or table) using embedded navigation controls.